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Overview

This expanded edition of The Ways of Paradox includes papers that are among Professor Quine's most important and influential, such as "Truth by Convention," "Carnap and Logical Truth," "On Carnap's Views on Ontology," "The Scope and Language of Science," and "Posits and Reality." Many of these essays deal with unresolved issues of central interest to philosophers today. About half of them are addressed to "a wider public than philosophers." The remainder are somewhat more professional and technical. This new edition of The Ways of Paradox contains eight essays that appeared after publication of the first edition, and it retains the seminal essays that must be read by anyone who seeks to master Quine's philosophy.

Quine has been characterized, in The New York Review of Books, as "the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank." His "philosophical innovations add up to a coherent theory of knowledge which he has for the most part constructed single-handed." In The Ways of Paradox new generations of readers will gain access to this philosophy.

Editorial Reviews

New York Review of Books
- Anthony Quinton

[Quine] is at once the most elegant expounder of systematic logic in the older, pre-Gödelian style of Frege and Russell, the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank....The title essay of Quine's The Ways of Paradox is a beautifully concise survey of the nature and significance of paradoxes...In general Quine's style combines a certain rotundity of utterance with a verbal wit that exploits the submerged associations and resonances of technical terms.

Boston Globe
- William S. Sahakian

The remarkable feature of this collection of essays is the achievement of profundity without the sacrifice of clarity. More than a clear, concise, nonmathematical presentation of logical perplexities and problems, this work is one written so that any intelligent layman can grasp the ideas wrestled with by Quine and other leading logicians. The manner in which the author interprets the pioneers of logical thought possesses the fascination of an exciting game rather than a dry intellectual exercise.

Science

Willard Van Orman Quine is the distinguished Harvard logician and philosopher who for more than a generation, and in prose as fresh and provocative as it is precise, has contributed fundamentally to the substance, the pedagogy, and the philosophy of mathematical logic.

Boston Globe

The remarkable feature of this collection of essays is the achievement of profundity without the sacrifice of clarity. More than a clear, concise, nonmathematical presentation of logical perplexities and problems, this work is one written so that any intelligent layman can grasp the ideas wrestled with by Quine and other leading logicians. The manner in which the author interprets the pioneers of logical thought possesses the fascination of an exciting game rather than a dry intellectual exercise.
— William S. Sahakian

New York Review of Books

[Quine] is at once the most elegant expounder of systematic logic in the older, pre-Gödelian style of Frege and Russell, the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank....The title essay of Quine's The Ways of Paradox is a beautifully concise survey of the nature and significance of paradoxes...In general Quine's style combines a certain rotundity of utterance with a verbal wit that exploits the submerged associations and resonances of technical terms.
— Anthony Quinton

Boston Globe

The remarkable feature of this collection of essays is the achievement of profundity without the sacrifice of clarity. More than a clear, concise, nonmathematical presentation of logical perplexities and problems, this work is one written so that any intelligent layman can grasp the ideas wrestled with by Quine and other leading logicians. The manner in which the author interprets the pioneers of logical thought possesses the fascination of an exciting game rather than a dry intellectual exercise.
— William S. Sahakian

New York Review of Books

[Quine] is at once the most elegant expounder of systematic logic in the older, pre-Gödelian style of Frege and Russell, the most distinguished American recruit to logical empiricism, probably the contemporary American philosopher most admired in the profession, and an original philosophical thinker of the first rank....The title essay of Quine's The Ways of Paradox is a beautifully concise survey of the nature and significance of paradoxes...In general Quine's style combines a certain rotundity of utterance with a verbal wit that exploits the submerged associations and resonances of technical terms.
— Anthony Quinton

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